by Milton Moon.

Im due to die sooner rather than later. My wife of sixty-seven years has already gone, her mortal remains, in ashes waiting for mine. Together theyll go, somewhere as part of the seasons or the tides ebb or flow. She is still with me, I talk to her often, burning incense twice a day and telling her incense is dispersed for the soul of the young girl.

Many people say when youre dead youre dead. Sceptics hedge their bets, no one knows they say, (not sceptical of their own scepticism.) Atheists say they do know; it is all over when you’re dead and gone - bones or ash no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no thing to carry with you. All is finished, except things you leave behind, genes or work to remind everyone you once were here.

Opposite to Sceptics or Atheists speculative thinkers of the ancient past expressed in myth and legend suggest a world beyond our world where everything exists in forms of knowing we cant know and will probably never know, the way humans know. Hindu thought, Judaic beliefs Buddhists, Christians, Islamic thought and others, all embracing eternalism in one form or another. All gods exist in many forms but no form contains the formless. Speculative philosophers speculate but only speculate -, no one knows for sure that everything is recorded and stored, and the storehouse whatever it is, or might be, has a consciousness, a part of consciousness itself.

Some speculate the storehouse is the Mind itself, and although the Mind permeates everywhere harbouring all we think and do, it itself remains unsullied. Every thought, every act, every hatred, every suspicion, good acts and bad acts, kind and unkind, merciful and merciless, fantasies, acts of imagination, a montage layering every facet, every activity, assuring an audience, not only a reaction but a participation. Like metadata it is all stored in the Mind owned by no one but linked to everyone.

Grossness attracts grossness, the subtle beckons the subtle, the unexplained, the explainable, (even the inexplicable). Like the physical world, conjoining or opposing, everything goes everywhere: the heavenly to where the heavenly go, as the hellish goes where it must go, but there is no judgement of either Heaven or Hell, everything goes where it belongs of itself.

No ones knows what instincts you were born with, or the ways nurture will affect you. Your past is as fragile, as is the present or future; more fragile than the perfumes and flavours wafted from a thousand countries, or born and burnished by a million lifetimes, ill or well lived, in peace or tumult. You might be lucky but Karma is not a waiting game: what you wish for in this life you may rue in the next.

Religions have their own ways, coming to terms with what happens when you enter the stage beyond. Christians have their Hell or Heaven others have different names. Buddhists speak of the Pure Land, the Mind unsullied by the contents whatever they might be.

In Japan the Buddha of the Pure Land is called Amida and reciting his Name is a direct link to the Mind beyond our ordinary use of minds. Of course it is a mystery, but so much is beyond the knowledge of human conceit. The Christians say ‘Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you’.

In Japan the Buddhists say Namu Amida Butsu responding to Amidas vow. Said with a sincere mind, a deep mind and an aspiring mind, an appeal to the Pure Land the Mind beyond the Mind, the Mind within you and all about. Jinen, of itself, made to become so.

Milton Moon is a senior Australian potter. He has many awards and was recently made a Member of Honour of the International Academy of ceramics. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, University of SA. He studied Zen in Japan and since then Jodo Shinshu. In October he turns 90. He still makes pots and writes poetry.